WAN LAN Measure Network Throughput and Bandwidth

3 minute read
linux , networking , systems , windows
, ,

This guide helps measure the network throughput and bandwidth between two hosts in the same network, different networks and across different data centers.

This specifically helped me when I needed to know how much throughput the company network had between headquarters data center and the Disaster Recovery data center which where in different states and I wanted to calculate how long would it take to replicate our SAN between the sites, about 60TB of data.

The tool I used for this is called iPerf (http://sourceforge.net/projects/iperf/), this tool includes both the Server and Client, I am running this tool from a RHEL 5.3 system.

You can find a RHEL/Centos binary for this tool at http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/iperf/

A Java based Graphical iperf tool can be found at http://code.google.com/p/xjperf/downloads/list, which can be run on a Windows system, with the Java runtime environment.

Now let’s get to the steps on how to measure network throughput.

1) Set up the iperf server

I am utilizing a RHEL 5.3 for the server.

Install iperf:

[root@remote]# rpm -Uvh http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/iperf/iperf-2.0.2-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

Run iperf as server:

[root@remote ~]# iperf -s ———————————————————— Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ————————————————————

Now that the iperf server is running, install the client at the other office.

2) Set up the iperf client on RHEL

Install iperf on RHEL:

[root@local]# rpm -Uvh http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/iperf/iperf-2.0.2-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

Run iperf as client on RHEL:

iperf has many great options, you can see all the options by doing # iperf -h

I usually use the following options to determine throughput:

[root@local ~]# iperf -c 10.3.3.3 -fk // 10.3.3.3 is the remote server -fk is to present as kbps ———————————————————— Client connecting to 10.3.3.3, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 3] local 10.2.2.2 port 38124 connected with 10.3.3.3 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.3 sec 37680 KBytes 30029 Kbits/sec

Server screen Output:

-———————————————————– Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 4] local 10.3.3.3 port 5001 connected with 10.2.2.2 port 38124 [ 4] 0.0-10.9 sec 36.8 MBytes 28.3 Mbits/sec

Using the -r option to “Do a bidirectional test individually”

[root@local ~]# iperf -c 10.3.3.3 -fk -r ———————————————————— Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ———————————————————— ———————————————————— Client connecting to 10.3.3.3, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 5] local 10.2.2.2 port 41973 connected with 10.3.3.3 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 5] 0.0-10.1 sec 27744 KBytes 22580 Kbits/sec [ 4] local 10.2.2.2 port 5001 connected with 10.3.3.3 port 55521 [ 4] 0.0-10.1 sec 48160 KBytes 39093 Kbits/sec

Server screen Output:

-———————————————————– Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 4] local 10.3.3.3 port 5001 connected with 10.2.2.2 port 41973 [ 4] 0.0-10.7 sec 27.1 MBytes 21.3 Mbits/sec ———————————————————— Client connecting to 10.2.2.2, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 4] local 10.3.3.3 port 55521 connected with 10.2.2.2 port 5001 [ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 47.0 MBytes 39.3 Mbits/sec

Using the -d option to “Do a bidirectional test simultaneously”

[root@local ~]# iperf -c 10.3.3.3 -fk -d ———————————————————— Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ———————————————————— ———————————————————— Client connecting to 10.3.3.3, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 5] local 10.2.2.2 port 41974 connected with 10.3.3.3 port 5001 [ 4] local 10.2.2.2 port 5001 connected with 10.3.3.3 port 40886 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 5] 0.0-10.1 sec 37872 KBytes 30648 Kbits/sec [ 4] 0.0-10.4 sec 12856 KBytes 10132 Kbits/sec

Server screen Output:

-———————————————————– Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 4] local 10.3.3.3 port 5001 connected with 10.2.2.2 port 41974 ———————————————————— Client connecting to 10.2.2.2, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 6] local 10.3.3.3 port 40886 connected with 10.2.2.2 port 5001 [ 6] 0.0-10.4 sec 12.6 MBytes 10.2 Mbits/sec [ 4] 0.0-10.7 sec 37.0 MBytes 28.9 Mbits/sec

3) Set up the iperf client on Windows

Download the JPerf client http://xjperf.googlecode.com/files/jperf-2.0.2.zip

Unzip and Run the jperf.bat, you will see a graphical interface, just enter the ip of the server and you are good to go.

You can adjust your client’s options, Dual = -d , Trade= -r in the command line client:

Server screen Output:

-———————————————————– Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ———————————————————— [ 4] local 10.3.3.3 port 5001 connected with 10.4.4.4 port 2606 [ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 2.52 MBytes 2.12 Mbits/sec